Slumdog Millionaire and Epistemologies of the City

Politics of neutrality: Urban knowledge practices and everyday formalisation in Karachi’s waterscape

“…As such, closer attention to everyday understandings of formality and informality can account for the diversity of lived experiences which emerge in response to bottom-up or state-led processes of formalisation and informalisation. Second, this article contributes to ongoing scholarship which highlights the role of knowledge in mediating urban processes, subjectivities and geographies (Anjaria and Anjaria, 2013; Anjaria and McFarlane 2011; Björkman, 2015; Hansen and Verkaaik, 2009; McFarlane, 2011). Much of this scholarship focuses on how knowledge that is ‘located in space and time and situated in particular contexts’ (McFarlane, 2011: 3) is used to make sense of uncertain urban contexts.…”

“…Similar to the difference between expert and local knowledge, scholars of the Global South highlight the difference between official and unofficial knowledge. As Anjaria and Anjaria (2013: 55) suggest, there exists an ‘alternative domain of knowledge outside of the formal domain of the state’ which is juxtaposed against the sort of knowledge produced through formal, institutionalised practices. Such alternative epistemologies are akin to the street smarts, or the lived knowledge that is gained through everyday experience (Hansen and Verkaaik, 2009; McFarlane, 2011).…”

Slumming about

“…Relying on, if not always seemingly aware of, the stigmatic origins and pejorative connotations of the term 'slum', there is a ready appeal to represent the slum as a dystopian space. Films such as City of God and Ghosts of Cité Soleil depict the slum as the space of gangs, drugs and violence, The Constant Gardener as the backdrop to a morality play involving corporate greed and imperialist mindsets, a space through which to critique 'race' and othering in District 9 and a site of graft, sociability and sentimental feel good in Slumdog Millionaire (see Anjaria and Anjaria, 2010;Melo, 2004;Peixoto, 2007). Through a host of media, we are invited to be 'slummers', an endeavour in which we are expected to be either shocked by the scenes of misery, dirt and disease or to empathise with the slum dwellers' fate.…”

“…Consider, for example, how treatments of poverty in Slumdog Millionaire are deemed gratuitous, voyeuristic encounters with the 'other', or depthless romanticisations or, strangest of all, simply inaccurate. The challenge to codes of beauty and ugliness highlights what some consider to be, or should be, 'real' (Anjaria and Anjaria, 2010).…”

Transnational Adaptation: Q & A, Slumdog Millionaire, and Aesthetic and Economic Relationships Between Bollywood and Hollywood

“… Ulka Anjaria and Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria suggest that the characterization of Salim as “a paradigmatic entrepreneur” works to critique “claims of globalization's democratic core” (57). However, it is important to remember that while Salim claims to be “at the center of the center,” the film shows him to be a gangster—a profession that is usually understood to be on the periphery of the social order. …”